What are your favorite, in a most meaningful way, books you read from high school (required reading) - up to 5 as we don’t need super long lists? These should be books that made you think or carried you away or something similar.
For me:
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Diary of Anne Frank (middle school for this one, but I still put it in there)
1984 - George Orwell
All of my books had a common theme of introducing me to mans’ power over other men and how wrong that can go. They definitely shaped my life in not wanting to be in “that” group as well as looking around to try to make sure others aren’t falling through the cracks.
We read a ton in high school and those are what stood out for me to recall on the spot now. I’m sure many others I don’t recall, and some we read I definitely don’t recall fondly, but I’d rather focus on those I appreciated. What about you?
Antigone
The Crucible
The Iliad
The Odyssey
Moby Dick
Though honestly of everything I read in high school, I liked the poetry the best. W. H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, e.e. cummings, Langston Hughs, Theordore Roethke, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owens…
-Jane Eyre. Inspired my desire to go to England, which I did. Also inspired me to study literature in college.
-Gone With The Wind. Such a saga. I loved Scarlett’s endless trials and tribulations.
-Romeo and Juliet. Not a book, but I loved when it was my turn to read my part aloud in class.
-1984. It was, I think, 1981 when I read this, and I remember thinking I was glad the world wasn’t really like that. Ha!
-The Diary of Anne Frank. I still remember everything about it. It really opened my eyes to the evil of the Holocaust.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember reading any required books in high school. I’m not sure why, possibly funding issues with providing the books (rural Oklahoma). We did read lots of Shakespeare from our textbook. I also remember Beowulf, which I hated. I read a lot on my own though, and my favorite classics during that time period would be To Kill a Mockingbird and a Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I have always enjoyed books with young narrators. Although I didn’t care for The Catcher in the Rye, and the Heart is a Lonely Hunter at all. Those put me off classics for a long while.
I loved the Poetry unit we did in seventh grade and can still quote lines from some of the poems we studied.
When my younger daughter was in high school, I enjoyed helping her with her literature homework. She was not a reader and together we read The Great Gatsby, Animal farm, Brave New World, and a few others. Although I didn’t love any of the books, I did very much like the teaching process at my daughter’s school. I was sad knowing what I had missed in my education.
Brave New World/1984 - fit right into my teenage angst
To Kill a Mockingbird - still holds up on a recent reread
The Diary of Anne Frank - probably read this in middle school but…
The Source - introduced me to Michener and loved the historical layering
Stranger in a Strange Land - wow, my bourgeois suburban world was limited!
Some of these books I’m going to have to look up as I don’t know them.
I’m enjoying reading the reasons of why for those of you who have shared.
I wonder if this is still going on. I hope not. English was my least favorite subject (science and math were my favorites), but reading is important along with the reasoning involved, etc. I prefer when schools have kids read a variety of things from elementary on up.
When my kids were going through school I snagged some of their books to read after they did out of curiosity. It’s rarely the same books now, but books like The Giver are just as worthy. (Can’t say I enjoyed all of their books - or even read them all.)
A Tale of Two Cities and To Kill a MockingBird were the only required books when I was in high school. I enjoyed both of them enough to reread them again later. In fact, just listened to To Kill a Mockingbird a couple months ago while driving to and from work and enjoyed listening to it, too.
I first read Gone with the Wind as a 7th grader. I checked it out of the school library on a Friday in January and then we got a blizzard and had two whole weeks of snow days. I stayed in my room and read most of those two weeks, only coming out to watch the Roots mini series on TV in the evenings.
I also enjoyed Evergreen by Belva Plain and …And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer
Your mention of Evergreen sparked a memory of a not very similar book I read in high school that I really enjoyed (I must have read them both at about the same time). The Thornbirds by Colleen McCullough. That was the first book that really swept me away I think. I was fascinated with the story of the family’s hardships in their new home in hot dry Australia, and of course, the inappropriate relationship between the main character and the local Priest. The mother’s long suffering attitude appalled me also and possibly made me question for the first time what kind of life I wanted.
I am embarrassed to admit that I also read Helter Skelter in the eighth grade which probably led to my lifelong love of true crime and murder mysteries.
Sorry to hijack this thread into a What inappropriate non required books did you like in high school!
A Doll’s House
The Scarlet Letter
Slaughterhouse Five
Black Like Me
Crime and Punishment
All made me think deeply about things I had never considered.
And I read inappropriate books pretty much exclusively in junior high. The Valley of the Dolls was an eye opener! I also read some young adult books about drugs and teen pregnancy. But the most inappropriate was reading The Happy Hooker while babysitting (in maybe 9th grade). I survived unscathed!
We read so many books in HS! Junior year was American Lit and senior year was British, starting with Beowulf. I didn’t enjoy all of it at the time, but i am glad I read them and can appreciate them more as I am older.
Grapes of Wrath - absolutely a wonderful book!
Brave New World
Gulliver’s Travels
A Good Man is Hard to Find (really short stories but it was required reading)
The Sound and the Fury
I could have done without Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter. And Beowulf.
I don’t remember any required books I read that I feel that way about. We had very few and they made no impression on me at all. But these are the ones I loved and read and reread all through high school:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Made me aware of poverty in a way I wasn’t before.
Meet The Austin’s. The book by the author of A Wrinkle in Time. By comparison with that book it Cemented in my mind that I would always prefer “ real stories about real people” ( I don’t mean non -fiction) over sci-fi or “ magical” books.
The Chosen. My knowledge of the roots of the Hasidic movement comes from this book. I think it’s very important to understanding Israel today though it has nothing to do with Israel.
Pride and Prejudice. The first Rom-com. Love them still.
Marathon Man. The miracle that is a true page turner. The beauty of a book that can sweep you from sentence to sentence almost like rushing water… whether it’s a “ good” book or not . Authors either can do it or they can’t. Very few can do it like William Goldman did.
Sorry, I missed the required reading part of the question. The books I listed above were not assigned, they were books I read on my own. The books we were assigned in high school were pretty awful, or at least I thought so then. Men of Iron, My Antonia, The Scarlet Letter. The worst part was that we spent weeks reading each one and weren’t supposed to read ahead. Long after I had finished whatever book was assigned and had read six more we were still slogging through Chapter 3. It was excruciating. Good thing I went into high school a reader because they tried really hard to make me hate it.
The book I read for ninth grade English–Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country had a huge impact on my views. It’s a beautifully written novel about apartheid in South Africa–something of which I knew nothing.